MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s new government has a strategy for dealing with President Trump.

Don’t anger him. Don’t cave in to him. Try to get him to help fund an ambitious investment plan to stem migration by creating jobs in Central America.

And if Mr. Trump cannot be persuaded, Mexican officials said in interviews that they would remind him that there is another player in the region willing to step into the vacuum: China.

That, in a nut shell, is the approach the Mexican government is betting can defuse the standoff over the thousands of migrants amassed at its border with the United States, hoping to make it across.

Mexico’s plan to try to raise money to develop Central America and southern Mexico was announced last week, when Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the country’s new president, introduced what he called a “Marshall Plan” to address the root causes of Central American migration: a $ 30 billion initiative to invest in the region and welcome migrants into Mexico with visas, health care and employment.

Mexican officials have compared the proposal to the plan to rebuild postwar Europe. This approach would represent a break with Mr. López Obrador’s predecessor, who considered giving in to Mr. Trump’s demands and allowing people seeking asylum in the United States to remain in Mexico while they wait.

And Mexico’s new plan is, in many respects, the opposite of Mr. Trump’s vow to crack down on migration, which includes building a wall, deploying the military and cutting aid to Central America.

In speaking about the contours of their new policy, Mexican officials told The New York Times that they would not force a confrontation with Mr. Trump by demanding that he accept the migrants onto American soil; that would only anger the American president, and he would not do it anyway, they said.

But at the same time, they said they were not going to strike a deal with the United States to keep asylum seekers on the Mexican side of the border. That would allow Mr. Trump to claim a victory Mexican officials are not willing to give him. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to aggravate already strained relationships with the Trump administration.

Instead, they want to change the focus of the conversation to expanding the economy of Central America and the south of their country by marshaling public and private investment to build infrastructure, develop the energy sector and create jobs in the region so people do not have to stream north in the first place.

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Mexican officials say they will not force a confrontation with President Trump on migration. Instead, they are proposing an investment plan for Central America.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

They acknowledge that it may be difficult to convince the Trump administration to invest large sums in the region, a proposal they have only recently broached with American officials.

Buy they are hoping the perceived threat of China’s growing presence in the region can be used as leverage to bring the United States on board.

The Mexican strategy to rely on the United States’ concerns about China’s expanding influence in the region reflects a growing sense in Mexico that it can no longer take cooperation with the United States for granted.

Both the White House and State Department declined to comment on the Mexican proposal.

“For a long time there has been this competition within Latin America for influence, where China is willing to invest billions in infrastructure and energy that the United States simply isn’t,” said Duncan Wood, the director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center.

The proposal is also a reflection of the distinct personalities of Mr. López Obrador and Mr. Trump: Both are mavericks — albeit on opposite sides of the political spectrum — and both are willing to break with long-established conventions.

“Partly because of Trump and partly because of Andrés Manuel, there is an opening there,” Mr. Wood said.

Unlike his predecessor, Mr. López Obrador is willing to chart an independent course in his response to the Trump administration — partly because of Mr. Trump’s hard line on migration and partly out of a conviction that the only way to tackle the matter is to go after its root causes.

And to do that, Mexico will look for help wherever it can find it, including China, which has already expressed an interest in Mr. López Obrador’s plan to lay hundreds of miles of track for a tourist train in the Yucatán Peninsula — a project widely opposed by environmental advocates.

Of course, that does not mean Mexico will make a sharp turn to China, given its longstanding relationship with the United States. Nor does floating the idea that China may participate make Mexico’s costly proposal any more plausible.

“The money is just not there,” said Mark Feierstein, the former senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council during the Obama administration. He noted that the United States was spending more than $ 650 million a year in Central America’s Northern Triangle, which is composed of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

But that may be beside the point.

“If nothing else, it is a good bargaining chip,” said Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, of the idea that China could increase its investment in the region. “Both sides are laying down their frameworks and their points of view as to how they should proceed.”

The idea that China could increase its influence in Mexico emerged even before Mr. López Obrador came into office.

“I heard from senior Mexican officials during the transition that if the United States is not going to treat Mexico with respect, don’t be surprised if you see a Chinese submarine in a Mexican port,” said Juan Gonzalez, who was an adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden on Central America.

“I think it was hyperbolic,” he said of the outgoing officials’ warning, before adding, “I think Mexico sees increased political risk coming from the political process in the United States and they are diversifying their interests.”

Since taking office on Dec. 1, Mr. López Obrador has done nothing if not shake up the establishment.

He has announced the cancellation of the construction of a new airport, a multibillion-dollar project that was well underway, and temporarily suspended new auctions for oil exploration in Mexico. He has also cut salaries for government employees and proposed a measure to dismantle a much-vaunted education overhaul.

As he did on the campaign trail, Mr. López Obrador has focused on domestic issues — an inward-looking vision that differs from recent Mexican presidents who saw the global stage as the nation’s future.

But the migrant crisis forced its way to the top of the agenda, proving a frustrating first test for Mr. López Obrador.

The arrival of thousands of migrants traveling in caravans from Honduras and other Central American countries raised the profile of an existing problem, increasing the stakes and forcing Mr. López Obrador to decide how to manage it just days after taking office.

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An expansion of the border wall as seen from Tijuana, Mexico.CreditMauricio Lima for The New York Times

For decades, Mexico kept its head down as hundreds of thousands of migrants — many of them Mexican — made their way into the United States. But in recent years, the nation’s status as a transit country has changed.

Mexico is becoming a destination, not just a portal to the United States. Every year, more people apply for asylum in Mexico, and many more choose to stay and seek work. A bottleneck in the United States has meant that thousands of migrants are stuck waiting months at the border for their initial asylum interview with the American authorities.

In 2014, at the urging of the Obama administration, Mexico adopted a tough policing strategy along its southern border with Guatemala that essentially amounted to detention and deportation. But that also failed to curtail the flow of migrants.

Today, with about 10,000 migrants having entered Mexico in caravans that focused global media attention on their plight, mass roundups and deportations are not an option, officials say. Nor is striking a deal with the Trump administration to host the migrants indefinitely.

So Mr. López Obrador’s government is trying to fold them into Mexican society — and raise money to invest in projects that would boost employment and prosperity in the region.

“It’s not enough just to point out that the causes of migration have to be dealt with,” said Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s foreign secretary, adding that Mexico wants to counter the idea “that the best way to confront migration is through exclusion and control.”

This is, in part, a recognition that Mexico forms a part of a busy migration corridor and that, with or without help from the United States, it has to deal with the issue.

“Finally, the issue of the Northern Triangle and migration is seen as a regional issue,” said Rafael Fernández de Castro, the director of the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego, and a former Mexican presidential adviser. “There is a window of opportunity. The knowledge and awareness have never been as clear as they are now.”

Mr. López Obrador is also signaling an interest in playing a broader leadership role in the region, as Mexico did during the 1970s and 1980s.

“Mexico wants to take back leadership in the region,” said Rodolfo Cruz Piñeiro, director of the department for population studies at the College of the Northern Border in Tijuana. “Mexico is telling the U.S.: ‘I can control this region for you, but I need your economic help.’”

Trump Warns China That He’s ‘Tariff Man,’ Spooking Stock Investors

Stocks, which rallied Monday on the potential for a truce in the United States-China trade war, began a downward spiral on Tuesday as confusion set in about whether an agreement had truly been reached.

The trade war is back on — at least as far as investors are concerned.

Stocks sank on Tuesday, as President Trump threatened China with further tariffs, just days after the two countries agreed to a cease-fire in their escalating economic conflict. Referring to himself as a “Tariff Man,” Mr. Trump, in a series of tweets, deepened the murkiness surrounding the trade agreement, while members of his economic team talked down the prospects of a broad deal.

The fear is that a lasting trade war will undermine the global growth at a time when some of the world’s largest economies are already slowing down, and the United States, a standout performer, is also expected to slow.

The global and domestic worries are undercutting the prospects for manufacturers, technology companies, regional banks and airlines, intensifying the sell-off in stocks. The S&P 500 lost more than 3 percent on Tuesday, after rallying the day before on the hope of a deal with China.

“They actually want to see a positive resolution where this problem is solved so they don’t have to worry about it,” said Randy Watts, chief investment strategist at the brokerage firm William O’Neil & Company.

Since the Trump administration started to impose tariffs on imports from China, the United States economy has been largely insulated from the trade war. The economy is on pace for its best year since 2005, unemployment is near 50-year lows, and corporate profits are surging.

But investors are now grappling with the potential for a protracted conflict, as the president signaled the negotiations could be more contentious than expected. Deep divisions remain between the two countries, including the administration’s insistence that China end its practice of pressuring American companies to hand over valuable technology and trade secrets.

Mr. Trump and President Xi Jinping of China agreed on Saturday not to impose any additional tariffs for 90 days while the two sides work toward a formal agreement. Raising optimism about the deal, Mr. Trump repeatedly cited specific agreements from China, including more purchases of American farm products.

The deal faced almost immediate doubt. Beijing never confirmed those details, while the White House sent mixed messages about what agreements the leaders had made.

Then on Monday, the White House said that Robert Lighthizer, the United States trade representative and a longtime China skeptic, would lead the talks with Beijing. The choice of Mr. Lighthizer, who has a reputation as a tough negotiator, signaled a tough road ahead.

By Tuesday, the optimism had completely faded as Mr. Trump once again called out China for its trade practices. In a series of tweets on Tuesday morning, he pushed the Chinese to buy American agricultural products “immediately,” and questioned whether a “real deal” with Beijing is actually possible.

“When people or countries come in to raid the great wealth of our Nation, I want them to pay for the privilege of doing so,” he wrote.

On Tuesday evening, after the stock market’s slide, he repeated this theme in another tweet. “We are either going to have a REAL DEAL with China, or no deal at all,” he wrote.

The mood of the market worsened throughout the day, with companies most exposed to the costs of the trade fight bearing the brunt of the pain. Shares of Boeing and Caterpillar — large exporters with significant sales in China — fell sharply, 4.9 percent for Boeing and 6.9 percent for Caterpillar.

But trade wasn’t the only issue on Tuesday. The Russell 2000 index of small companies — which typically depend far less on foreign sales — fell 4.4 percent, while regional banks, automakers, airlines and home-building shares all dropped.

The bond market also flashed warning signs. The gap between the interest rates on short- and long-term United States government bonds fell sharply on Tuesday, and by some measures hit its lowest point since before the financial crisis. Many analysts say long-term rates could soon fall below short-term rates, a phenomenon known as an inversion of the yield curve.

“The inversion has always preceded the recession so you can’t just pooh-pooh it,” said Vinay Pande, head of trading strategies at UBS Global Wealth Management’s Chief Investment Office.

In the past 60 years, every recession has been preceded by an inverted yield curve, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. The phenomenon has “correctly signaled all nine recessions since 1955 and had only one false positive, in the mid-1960s, when an inversion was followed by an economic slowdown but not an official recession,” the bank’s researchers wrote in March.

Few say a recession is imminent, given the strength of the American economy. But the United States has been an outlier in a shaky global economy. Growth in China has slowed, and the economies of Japan and Germany shrank in the third quarter.

Ultimately, such a slowdown could weigh on the United States, too, and some American companies are already starting to prepare for an uncertain economic future.

Automobile makers, already buffeted by rising steel costs because of the trade war, now face plateauing sales at home. General Motors last week said it would idle five factories in North America and cut roughly 14,000 jobs in a bid to trim costs.

On Tuesday, the low-cost retailer Dollar General said that the next phase of tariffs in the trade war between the United States and China “could have a more significant impact on our business and on our customer’s budgets.” Its shares fell 6.8 percent.

The home builder Toll Brothers, facing sluggish sales in the face of rising mortgage rates, reported that orders for new homes fell for the first time since 2014, helping to set off a decline in home-building stocks.

“Investors are worried about the economy,” Mr. Watts said. “That’s clearly what this is showing.”

Alan Rappeport is an economic policy reporter, based in Washington. He covers the Treasury Department and writes about taxes, trade and fiscal matters in the era of President Trump. He previously worked for The Financial Times and The Economist. @arappeport

BEIJING — China vows to stem the supply of the powerful opioid fentanyl flowing into the United States. It pledges to target exports of fentanyl-related substances bound for the United States that are prohibited there, while sharing information with American law-enforcement authorities.

Such promises, echoed in the recent meeting between the countries’ presidents, ring familiar.

They first emerged in September 2016, when the Obama administration said China and the United States had agreed on “enhanced measures” meant to keep fentanyl from coming into the United States. But in its official statements or state media reports made at the time, the Chinese government never specified the steps it intended to take, and its follow-up has been patchy at best.

So when the Trump administration said on Saturday that President Xi Jinping of China had agreed to designate fentanyl as a controlled substance in “a wonderful humanitarian gesture,” analysts said there was little to cheer about.

“It’s in many ways all theater from the White House and very little serious substance,” said John Collins, executive director of the International Drug Policy Unit at the London School of Economics. “It seems to me the same story again.”

Mr. Trump has repeatedly cited China as the main source of illicit fentanyl in the United States, where it helped drive total overdose deaths last year to more than 70,000 — a record. The president’s assertion was supported by a report last month by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which Congress created to monitor relations between the countries.

Cracking down on the manufacturing and distribution of fentanyl in China is no easy task. As Mr. Collins noted, many classes of the drug are already considered controlled substances in the country. Fentanyl’s chemical structure and those of related analogues can be modified to create similar yet distinct substances, so new versions can be concocted quickly.

Because of fentanyl’s potency and the ease with which it can be produced, one kilogram bought for $ 3,000 to $ 5,000 in China can potentially kill 500,000 people, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The Trump administration said that Mr. Xi’s announcement meant that people selling fentanyl to American buyers and shipping it into the United States would “be subject to China’s maximum penalty under the law”: the death penalty. China did not specify the punishment for violating the new ban, but anyone guilty of trafficking in controlled substances is subject to capital punishment.

The United States has long pushed China to systemically control all fentanyl substances. China’s approach has been to ban chemicals one by one, and only after getting evidence for why it should do so from the other countries and the United Nations.

The lag has allowed Chinese makers of illicit drugs to create new fentanyl derivatives faster than they can be controlled, according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

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A pharmacy technician preparing syringes of fentanyl in a hospital. Although the powerful opioid has legitimate medical uses, it is also a major cause of addiction and overdose deaths.CreditRick Bowmer/Associated Press

China, which does not have an opioid-abuse problem, has made some progress in cooperating with the United States on the issue. It has said it would label 25 fentanyl substances and two precursors — the chemical ingredients that can be used to make the drug — controlled substances.

Officials from the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Food and Drug Administration have recently praised China for being receptive to working together and sharing information.

Jeremy Douglas, the regional representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, said China’s willingness to take steps to control fentanyl was “a good move.”

“Practically it means that anything that is created in that class will be automatically on the Chinese control list, and there will be legal repercussions for trafficking,” he said. “Right now, there’s nothing stopping a pharmaceutical company or supplier from selling related but noncontrolled substances.”

But Mr. Douglas said the impact would not be immediate. He said he had clarified the announcement’s meaning with a senior official in Beijing, who told him that China would need to amend its laws before the full ban could take effect.

That process might take months, assuming China proceeds. As with other points of contention between the two countries, the problem for Washington is getting Beijing to fulfill its promises.

Complicating the matter is the size of China’s chemical industry. State Department data shows that there are about 160,000 chemical companies in China. Weak regulation means that those producing fentanyl substances will probably still be willing to sell them despite the new ban.

“China controls the majority of global fentanyl sales, so it is a thriving industry there,” said Jeffrey Higgins, a retired special supervisory agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration. “There are economic incentives for the Chinese to let opioid production flourish and fewer incentives to restrict their economy to cooperate with foreign law enforcement. We will have to wait and see how much the Chinese government cracks down on fentanyl producers.”

There is also little awareness in China that the United States has an opioid problem, or that China is contributing to it.

During an informal meeting about health care cooperation in Virginia last month, American officials told senior officials from the China Food and Drug Administration and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention about America’s fentanyl problem.

Chen Xi, an assistant professor of public health at Yale University who was there, said the Chinese officials said that “they had never heard of this.”

Now, he said, “it’s no longer underground, everyone is talking about this.” He added: “That’s a major breakthrough — a major step toward better stronger enforcement and regulation.”

Trump Signs New Trade Deal With Canada and Mexico After Bitter Negotiations

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President Trump, Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, and President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico spoke at the G-20 summit meeting about the new North American trade pact, which will replace Nafta.Published OnNov. 30, 2018CreditCreditTom Brenner for The New York Times

BUENOS AIRES — President Trump and his Mexican and Canadian counterparts sought to put the acrimony of the past two years behind them on Friday as they signed a new trade agreement governing hundreds of billions of dollars in commerce that underpins their mutually dependent economies.

Meeting for the first time since the revised North American Free Trade Agreement was sealed, Mr. Trump, President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada hailed the results as a boon for workers, businesses and the environment, even as they alluded to the harsh talks that had preceded this day.

But Mr. Trump faces a daunting challenge at home, where Congress must approve the deal before it can take effect.

The complicated politics of trade would have made the task formidable enough even before the midterm elections, but it will grow only more so once Democrats assume control of the House in January.

Some pro-trade lawmakers complain that the revised agreement puts too many limits on the free flow of goods and services across borders, while trade skeptics maintain that it does not do enough to safeguard American jobs, encourage higher wages and protect the environment.

Submission to Congress will open a frenzy of fresh negotiations over legislation to enact the agreement, potentially unraveling the careful balance achieved with Mexico and Canada.

In signing the agreement on Friday, Mr. Trump sought to ratchet up the pressure on President Xi Jinping of China, with whom he will meet on Saturday amid an escalating trade war.

Mr. Trump has already imposed tariffs of 10 percent on many Chinese goods and has threatened to raise them to 25 percent. He signaled as late as Friday that he may reach an understanding with Mr. Xi during a dinner to forestall such a move.

The agreement with Canada and Mexico is a signature achievement for Mr. Trump, who has long derided nearly every major trade deal that the United States has entered.

Negotiators reached a last-minute deal in September after months of rancorous talks that raised doubts about whether any accord was possible. Mr. Trump repeatedly assailed his counterparts and threatened to scrap Nafta altogether.

The appearance of the three leaders side by side in Buenos Aires to attend an economic summit meeting of the Group of 20, or G-20, was meant to paper over the bitterness, but the hard feelings were still evident.

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A dairy farm in Rhode Island. Under the agreement, American dairy farmers would be allowed greater access to Canada’s market.CreditOliver Doyle/Reuters

“We worked hard on this agreement,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s been long and hard. We’ve taken a lot of barbs and a little abuse, and we got there. It’s great for all of our countries.”

Mr. Trump did not say that he was the one who had dished out most of the barbs and much of the abuse, but he insisted that he had come out of the process with a stronger relationship with the two leaders.

He said that Mr. Trudeau, whom he once assailed as “very dishonest and weak,” had become “a great friend,” despite it all.

“It’s been a battle,” he added, “and battles sometimes make great friendships.”

Stoic and unmoved, Mr. Trudeau did not respond directly but seemed to refer implicitly to speculation that he might not attend the ceremony and send a lower-level official to sign in his place.

His schedule for Buenos Aires did not initially list the ceremony. He opted to attend anyway, saying the deal “maintains stability for Canada’s entire economy” and removes the dangers associated with a threatened United States withdrawal.

Mr. Trudeau pointedly referred to the accord as the “new North American Free Trade Agreement” and described it as “modernizing Nafta,” despite Mr. Trump’s effort to rebrand it as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

The Canadian leader also used the occasion to press Mr. Trump on steel and aluminum tariffs, which remain unresolved.

“Make no mistake, we will stand up for our workers and fight for their families and their communities,” Mr. Trudeau said. “And Donald, it’s all the more reason why we need to keep working to remove the tariffs on steel and aluminum between our two countries.”

The signing came shortly after a separate ceremony, hosted by Mr. Peña Nieto, presenting Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, with Mexico’s highest award for foreigners in honor of his role in negotiating the trade agreement.

The announcement this week that the award would go to Mr. Kushner drew waves of criticism, given the insulting language Mr. Trump has used about Mexicans, including his description during the presidential campaign of illegal immigrants from Mexico as rapists.

In accepting the Order of the Aztec Eagle from Mexico, Mr. Kushner insisted that the president’s harsh language did not reflect the trust that has developed between the leaders of the two countries.

“Through your direction and leadership we were able to accomplish a lot of great things,” Mr. Kushner told Mr. Trump at the ceremony. “While there has been a lot of tough talk, I have seen the genuine respect and care that President Trump has for Mexico and the Mexican people, and I do believe we have been able to put that in the right light.”

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Cars at the port of Veracruz, Mexico. To be exempted from tariffs under the new agreement, cars need to have a higher percentage of their parts manufactured in North America, in factories that pay an average of $ 16 an hour or more.CreditVictoria Razo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

While analysts said the new trade agreement was not as much of a transformation as Mr. Trump has suggested, it does rewrite the rules for an extraordinary amount of commerce between the three nations.

The United States did $ 581.6 billion in business with Canada last year, and $ 557.6 billion with Mexico, making them the nation’s second- and third-largest trading partners.

Under the agreement, American dairy farmers would be allowed greater access to Canada’s market to sell their cheese, milk and other products. A higher percentage of cars would have to be manufactured in North America and factories must pay their workers an average of $ 16 an hour or more to be exempted from tariffs.

The deal also updates provisions on the digital economy, agriculture and labor unions, but it preserves an international dispute mechanism that Mr. Trump had sought to eliminate.

Whether Mr. Trump can reach across the aisle to sell it to Congress remains an open question. In nearly two years in office, he has made little effort to forge bipartisan consensus in Congress, as Republicans controlled both chambers.

But trade muddies the usual partisan lines, with free traders and skeptics of globalization in both parties, and the dynamics were further complicated by the announcement this week by General Motors that it will eliminate 14,000 jobs and idle five plants in the United States and Canada.

Mr. Trump played down the challenge on Friday, expressing confidence that he would easily win approval by Congress.

“It’s been so well reviewed, I don’t expect to have very much of a problem,” he said.

Business groups and some Republicans praised the agreement and called for expeditious endorsement by lawmakers. “I believe it will create more jobs and expand economic opportunities for American workers, farmers and manufacturers by leveling the playing field on trade,” said Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio.

But Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader and a longtime critic of Nafta, said on Friday that the new agreement could not be “simply a rebranding of the same old policies that hurt our economy and workers for years” if it is to pass Congress.

“It must prove to be a net benefit to middle-class families and working people in our country and must have strong labor and environmental protections, which in the present deal are too weak,” he said.

A dozen Republican senators sent Mr. Trump a letter last week urging him to submit the agreement for approval in the lame-duck session of the departing Congress before Democrats assume control of the House in January.

Senator Patrick J. Toomey, a Republican from Pennsylvania who signed the letter, said the deal still needed to be improved even now, despite what he considered the improvements to the trade structure between the three nations.

“Unfortunately, the benefits of these enhancements are more than offset by the trade-limiting provisions,” he said in a statement. “However, I would be willing to vote for the agreement if the president takes steps to strengthen it in the coming weeks through pro-trade modifications in the implementing legislation.”

When General Motors announced that it would idle five North American plants and eliminate thousands of jobs, it said the move would ease the burden of spending billions of dollars to develop the battery-powered vehicles of the future.

But the White House put a question mark over those plans on Tuesday when President Trump — irate over the cutbacks — threatened to punish G.M. by ending federal tax credits that have helped underwrite that automaker’s electric-vehicle fleet.

“Very disappointed with General Motors and their CEO, Mary Barra, for closing plants in Ohio, Michigan and Maryland,” Mr. Trump said in a Twitter post. “Nothing being closed in Mexico & China.”

Apparently referring to G.M.’s federal rescue from bankruptcy in 2009, the president added: “The U.S. saved General Motors, and this is the THANKS we get! We are now looking at cutting all @GM subsidies, including for electric cars.”

So a day after announcing a plan meant to put it on firmer financial ground by shedding money-losing operations and refocusing its resources, the biggest of Detroit’s automakers found itself on the defensive.

At a White House news briefing, Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council, said “there’s a lot of disappointment, even anger” in the administration over G.M.’s decision — a sentiment he said he had shared in a “lengthy conversation” with Ms. Barra. He cited the recent renegotiation of a trade agreement with Canada and Mexico on terms that he said were “a great help to the automobile industry, and to autoworkers.”

As the president’s pique became increasingly evident, the automaker put out a statement on its “commitment to U.S. manufacturing” that said in part: “We appreciate the actions this administration has taken on behalf of industry to improve the overall competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing.”

The company said on Monday that it would halt operations at four plants in the United States and one in Canada, at the cost of roughly 6,000 factory jobs, while also cutting its salaried work force in North America by 8,000.

G.M.’s shares rose almost 5 percent on Monday, but they gave back about half of those gains on Tuesday in the face of the administration’s unhappiness and its threat over the tax credits.

A bright future for electric vehicles is one of G.M.’s goals. Here are some of the calculations, and the uncertainties, behind the course it has chosen.

What difference do the electric-vehicle credits make?

The federal government offers a $ 7,500 tax credit to buyers of battery-powered and plug-in hybrid vehicles, an incentive that many consumers have found attractive. The full credit, however, is available only on the first 200,000 electric vehicles an automaker sells. Once that threshold is reached, the credit falls to $ 3,750 for six months, then to $ 1,875 for an additional six months. Beyond that, there is no tax credit.

Tesla is the only carmaker to have sold more than 200,000 electric cars. At the end of this year, the tax credit on Tesla vehicles falls to $ 3,750.

G.M. says it has sold about 190,000 — mostly hybrid Volts, a model it said Monday it was discontinuing, and fully electric Bolts — and will pass 200,000 early next year.

There are proposals in Congress that would extend or expand the credit, but the Trump administration’s opposition could dim or kill those prospects.

“We’re going to be looking at certain subsidies regarding electric cars and others and whether they should apply or not,” Mr. Kudlow said Tuesday. “Can’t say anything final about that, but we are looking into it.”

Why did G.M. choose the plants it is shuttering?

Of the five factories that G.M. is mothballing, three are assembly plants: Lordstown, Ohio; Oshawa, Ontario; and the Detroit-Hamtramck plant in Michigan. All are almost certainly losing money, and make cars whose sales have plunged. As a result, the plants are operating well below capacity.

Production in Lordstown fell by more than half last year from 2016. This year it has operated just a single, eight-hour shift each day. Typically, car plants must operate two shifts to generate profits.

Moreover, the outlook for each plant is grim. With gas prices low, American consumers have flocked to S.U.V.s and all but abandoned small cars, like the Cruze, which is made in Lordstown, and the Impala, the Buick LaCrosse, and the Cadillac CT6, made at Detroit-Hamtramck. The plant in Oshawa also produces the Impala.

Are these plants closed for good?

Not necessarily. G.M. specifically announced that the plants were now “unassigned” — that is, they have not yet been assigned new vehicles to make after they stop production in 2019.

Next year the company and the United Auto Workers union will negotiate a new labor contract. In past negotiations, the union has given concessions on wages and other cost-saving measures in exchange for the company’s keeping plants open. Idling the plants now gives G.M. a powerful bargaining chip in the contract talks.

“Many of the U.S. workers impacted by these actions will have the opportunity to shift to other G.M. plants where we will need more employees to support growth in trucks, crossovers and S.U.V.s,” the automaker said Tuesday — in other words, not the models it has been making in those plants. Ford Motor Company has also cut jobs and dropped sedans from its North American lineup this year.

In addition, G.M. is working on a dozen or more electric vehicles that it plans to roll out in two to four years. Those models will have to be made somewhere, and some could end up in one or more of the three idled plants.

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A self-driving car made by G.M.’s Cruise unit outside the headquarters in San Francisco where it does most of its testing.CreditHeather Somerville/Reuters

Will the billions invested in new technologies pay off?

It’s not clear. Tesla has proved that tens of thousands of people are willing to buy upscale electric cars. It has not yet proved definitively that it can make money doing so. That’s also a big hurdle for G.M., as well as Ford and most other major automakers.

G.M. and others have produced electric vehicles, but sales for each model have usually amounted to a few thousand cars a month — far too few to turn a profit. G.M. produces the Chevrolet Bolt, an electric car that is supposed to go up to 238 miles before needing a recharge. But so far this year, it has sold only about 13,000 Bolts.

As for the huge investments in self-driving technologies, their profit potential is even less certain. G.M. has poured billions of dollars into its autonomous-driving unit, G.M. Cruise, and has recruited Honda and SoftBank, the Japanese technology giant, as partners.

G.M. Cruise is working on a self-driving car with no steering wheel and no pedals, and it intends to use the car in driverless and delivery services that the company hopes will become a lucrative line of business.

G.M. may be one of the first to rush into this field, but it faces an unfamiliar path and plenty of competition. Ford, Uber, Lyft and Waymo, the self-driving company started by Alphabet, the parent of Google, are all working on driverless services. Even if these services generate profits, it could be years before the companies earn back their investments.

What do G.M.’s cutbacks say about the economy?

Not a lot. The halting of production at these three sites doesn’t mean G.M. is struggling. On the contrary, the company continues to report billions in profits, thanks to buoyant pickup and S.U.V. sales.

G.M. took this action because it is being squeezed. It is losing money on the small cars and sedans these plants make, and it needs to keep investing in new technologies. By idling the three assembly plants — the other two make transmissions — it hopes to use the savings to help fund its electric-vehicle and autonomous-driving ambitions.

That particular need to shift capital investment is not an issue in other sectors. And while the industry is the largest manufacturing sector, it makes up only about 4 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product.

A broader economic slowdown could certainly cause grief for automakers. While Ms. Barra said one factor in G.M.’s move was to “improve our downturn protection,” she also made a point of saying the automaker was acting “while the company and the economy are strong.” So a few idle auto plants are not necessarily a leading indicator for the broader American economy.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: What’s Behind G.M.’s Cuts, And Why Trump Is Furious. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Mr. Trump has vowed to keep the migrants on Mexican soil while they apply for asylum in the United States, a process that could squeeze them into squalid, overcrowded shelters for months, possibly even years. Mexican officials say the strain is already causing a humanitarian emergency, creating a political crisis for Mr. López Obrador even before he takes office.

Mexico’s foreign ministry said Monday it had presented a diplomatic note to the United States Embassy asking for an “exhaustive investigation” into the use of nonlethal weapons at the border on Sunday, where at least two dozen tear gas canisters released by American agents landed in Mexico. But the statement said Mexico would continue to cooperate with the United States on migration.

Later, at the White House, Mr. Trump defended the use of tear gas and said: “They’re not coming into the United States. They will not be coming into our country.” Although images showed families with children running from the gas, Mr. Trump said, “We don’t use it on children.”

After more than 15 years of campaigning as a leftist firebrand, Mr. López Obrador must swiftly decide: Will he stand up to Mr. Trump and defend the migrants’ pleas to be allowed into the United States, even if many of their asylum requests will ultimately be rejected? Or will he acquiesce to Mr. Trump’s demands and the economic imperative of good relations with the United States?

“The Mexican government is in a dead-end alley,” said Raúl Benítez Manaut, a professor of international relations at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. “López Obrador is facing a baptism of fire, and a dilemma of whether he should maintain his promises of humanitarian policies, or stop the masses of migrants trying to reach the U.S.”

Members of the new Mexican administration, which will take office on Saturday, view the situation with alarm. Top cabinet ministers had been preparing on Sunday to discuss what to do about the standoff with the United States — and their own country’s growing frustration with thousands of poor migrants streaming in from Central America — when their agenda was hijacked by the fracas at the border.

Suddenly, the incoming ministers found themselves watching videos of hundreds of migrants, including small children, rushing toward the border gates and getting tear-gassed by American border agents.

Mr. López Obrador, who has promised jobs and visas to migrants traveling north, now has to square his lofty campaign promises with some nettlesome international realities — as the whole world watches.

The question is, which version of Mr. López Obrador will be facing off against Mr. Trump?

Unpredictable. Temperamental. Beloved by his base and loathed by his detractors.

Mr. López Obrador, known by his initials AMLO, has been compared more than once to Mr. Trump.

And as is often the case with the American president, even his closest aides say they are not sure which Mr. López Obrador will emerge: the avuncular leader who preaches love and morality, the leftist firebrand who skewers opponents, the pragmatist aiming for a broader development deal for the region — or the impetuous politician who seems to make it up as he goes along.

For now, the new administration is being careful not to paint itself into a corner, noting that it has not taken office yet.

“We have little margin right now because we don’t have our own operation,” said Marcelo Ebrard, the incoming foreign minister. “Right now, we are just spectators.”

The disturbance at the border underscored the fragility of the situation. As more migrants from Central America gather — with as many as 10,000 expected to reach Tijuana in the coming weeks — the urgency to manage the chaos grows by the day.

Top officials in Mr. López Obrador’s new government fear that images of migrants trying to force their way into the United States will heighten the anti-immigrant sentiment that Mr. Trump has channeled so effectively in the United States. That could make it even harder to strike a resolution that involves compromise.

And while Mr. López Obrador has promised humane treatment for migrants passing through or staying in Mexico, it is unclear what his country will get for housing tens of thousands of migrants as they await asylum decisions from backlogged American courts.

The team around Mr. López Obrador is acutely aware that Mexico has long demanded humane treatment for its own migrants in the United States. Now, Mexico is facing scrutiny for how it treats migrants.

Local officials in Tijuana warned this weekend that they cannot shoulder the cost of the migrants, and they blamed the federal government for not providing money to open another shelter to handle the overcrowding.

For the time being, the city is cramming migrants into a sports center that already looks like an overwhelmed refugee camp, and many Mexicans are growing increasingly frustrated with the migrants’ presence, worried that they will take away jobs, resources and government attention from Mexican citizens. On Monday, Mexico increased federal police presence outside the sports complex.

“I’ve been feeling so desperate,” said Marta Alicia Martínez Padilla, 26, a migrant from Guatemala who added that her family had sold their tent to buy basic supplies like food and toilet paper. “I have no idea what to do.”

Since his election, Mr. López Obrador has set a course intended to keep a smooth relationship with Mr. Trump, who has made trade and migration the focal points of the complex relationship between the two countries.

Mr. López Obrador will take office on Saturday with an ambitious domestic agenda, intended to tackle Mexico’s entrenched inequality and spur development in the country’s impoverished south. The last thing he wanted was a conflict with Mr. Trump that might rattle Mexico’s markets.

That helps explain why, despite his long-held reservations over free trade, Mr. López Obrador signed off on a revised trade agreement that President Enrique Peña Nieto negotiated with the Trump administration, hoping to remove a central irritant in Mr. Trump’s approach to Mexico.

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United States border patrol officers at the border fence near Tijuana on Sunday.CreditHannah Mckay/Reuters

Mr. López Obrador also sought a way to placate Mr. Trump over migration — an issue that Mr. Trump has made a centerpiece of his appeal to supporters. In a letter to Mr. Trump a couple of weeks after his election, Mr. López Obrador laid out a plan to tackle migration at its roots — through development in Mexico’s southern region and at the border with the United States — as well as in Central America.

Mexico was prepared to dedicate money to the effort, Mr. López Obrador wrote, and if the United States partnered with Mexico and Central American nations, “we could gather a considerable quantity of resources to develop the region.”

His goal, he wrote, was that people could find jobs at home so that migration would be an option, not a necessity.

It was an ambitious proposal to a president who has focused on enforcement as the tool to limit migration into the United States. But then events in Central America took a turn that pushed the issue of migration to the forefront.

Mr. López Obrador took a generous approach. There would be room for migrants in his development program in southern Mexico, he said, and his incoming interior minister, Olga Sánchez Cordero, discussed granting one million work visas to Central Americans.

But this weekend provided a case study of the problem brewing at the border.

“It is a complicated situation, but AMLO also has the opportunity to seize this crisis and this big moment,” said Claudia Masferrer, a migration expert at Colegio de México.

“In the short term, however, he has to deal with the migrants reaching the border and the tension in Tijuana,” she added, noting the rising anger at the migrants inside Mexico. “Even though AMLO has a high approval rate, this will create a strong opposition against him.”

First, Mr. López Obrador needs to “try to calm people down on Dec. 1,” when he takes office, she said, “because things are really heated up right now.”

Bonhomie? C’est Fini as Trump and Macron Seek to Defuse Tension

PARIS — They shook hands politely and patted each other on the arm stiffly. Their tight-lipped smiles appeared strained and forced. No cheeks were kissed, no friendly rubs were given, none of the bonhomie of their earlier meetings was on display.

So much for the bromance.

After a promising start, the relationship between President Trump and President Emmanuel Macron of France has soured. By the time they met in Paris on Saturday, the trans-Atlantic alliance that was to be showcased by this weekend’s commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I appeared to be fraying instead.

“The honeymoon is well and truly over,” said Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Trump’s visible contempt for allies over trade and the Iran nuclear deal are humiliating for Macron. There were high hopes of Macron’s charm offensive, but Trump’s actions have shown that it had no policy impact and that it is dangerous for any political leader to tie his reputation to the mercurial mood swings of the American president.”

It did not help on Saturday that Mr. Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery at the foot of the hill where the Battle of Belleau Wood was fought. Aides cited the rain; the Marines who pilot presidential helicopters often recommend against flying in bad weather. But that did not convince many in Europe who saw it as an excuse and another sign of disrespect.

“They died with their face to the foe and that pathetic inadequate @realDonaldTrump couldn’t even defy the weather to pay his respects to The Fallen,” Nicholas Soames, a Conservative member of the British Parliament and grandson of Winston Churchill, wrote on Twitter. He added the hashtag: #hesnotfittorepresenthisgreatcountry.

Ben Rhodes, who was deputy national security adviser to President Barack Obama, dismissed the explanation. “I helped plan all of President Obama’s trips for 8 years,” he tweeted. “There is always a rain option. Always.”

Mr. Trump will have another chance to pay respects to the war dead on Sunday with a scheduled visit to the Suresnes American Cemetery outside Paris following the ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe marking the anniversary of the armistice at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. But he will not stay for a Paris peace forum that Mr. Macron is sponsoring to bring together world leaders to discuss ways to avoid conflict.

“Trump’s absence from the Peace forum tomorrow, apparently alone among the 72 heads of state and government, will have a negative impact — the man who did not even pretend to work for peace, as it were,” said François Heisbourg, chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a research organization.

In a five-minute session with reporters before their meeting on Saturday, Mr. Trump and Mr. Macron sought to defuse simmering tension over security and trade. Mr. Macron reassured his visitor that his proposal to create a “true European army” was in harmony with Mr. Trump’s repeated insistence that Europe stop relying so much on the United States for its defense.

“I do share President Trump’s views that we need much better burden-sharing within NATO, and that’s why I do believe my proposals for European defense are utterly consistent with that,” Mr. Macron said with Mr. Trump at the Élysée Palace.

Mr. Trump, who had called the idea of a European army “very insulting” in a tweet three minutes after Air Force One landed in France on Friday, said he was glad to hear Mr. Macron’s reasoning. “He understands the United States can only do so much, in fairness to the United States,” Mr. Trump said.

The flap may have resulted from misleading accounts of Mr. Macron’s comments, which came in an interview in French with Europe 1 radio this week. In the interview, Mr. Macron said that Europe needed to defend itself against the United States as well as Russia and China, but he was referring to cyberthreats, not the American government. The discussion of a European army actually came up later in the interview, and he characterized it as lightening America’s burden, not defending against it.

Still, Mr. Macron was critical in the interview of Mr. Trump’s move to scrap the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, a three-decade-old agreement that eliminated a whole class of missiles stationed in and aimed at Europe. The United States has accused Russia of violating the treaty and Mr. Trump seems focused on whether such missiles might be useful in countering China, but European leaders see it as reopening a threat to their own countries.

“When I see President Trump announcing that he’s quitting a major disarmament treaty, which was formed after the 1980s euro-missile crisis that hit Europe, who is the main victim?” Mr. Macron said in the interview. “Europe and its security.”

The tense meeting with Mr. Trump contrasted with Mr. Macron’s joint appearance with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany later in the day. At a solemn ceremony in the woods outside the northern town of Compiègne where the armistice was signed on Nov. 11, 1918, the two leaders stood in front of a plaque celebrating peace and Franco-German friendship.

It was the first time a German leader had returned to the spot where both World War I and World War II armistices were concluded. After conquering France in 1940, Adolf Hitler forced the defeated French to return the same railway car used in 1918 to consecrate Germany’s defeat, a way of humiliating his vanquished foe.

On Saturday, Mr. Macron and Ms. Merkel entered a similar car that now sits inside a museum at the site and sat glumly side by side for a few moments. The original car was destroyed during the second war and much at the site razed on Hitler’s orders. The ceremony, simple yet symbolic, was over in 45 minutes, after the French and German national anthems were sung.

“The symbolism of it is, it’s not just a question of military victory, or military defeat, but of friendship between France and Germany, and also that both sides have overcome this defeat,” said Sylvain Fort, a top aide to Mr. Macron. “We’ve overcome this defeat to build a friendship that’s lasted 70 years.”

The meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Macron earlier in the day seemed decidedly chillier than their warm session in Washington in April when they smiled broadly, hugged, kissed each other on the cheeks and lavished praise on each other. During their short appearance before reporters, Mr. Trump remained formal and distant. When he avoided sharp language in front of the cameras, Mr. Macron appeared relieved and patted Mr. Trump’s leg appreciatively.

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President Macron and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany laid a wreath at a solemn ceremony in the woods outside the northern town of Compiègne, France, where the armistice was signed on Nov. 11, 1918.CreditEtienne Laurent/EPA, via Shutterstock

“We have become very good friends over the last couple of years,” Mr. Trump said, with none of the enthusiasm of last spring. “We have much in common in many ways — perhaps more ways than people would understand. But we are — we’re very much similar in our views.”

Mr. Macron referred to Mr. Trump as “my good friend” and said they had “worked very closely together” in countering Syria’s use of chemical weapons. “Our people are very proud to have you here,’’ he said.

A major point of contention is Mr. Trump’s decision to reimpose sanctions on Iran following his withdrawal from the multinational accord intended to curb the country’s nuclear program. The French want to continue doing business with Iran and resent pressure by the Americans.

The Trump administration waived the sanctions for eight countries, but France was not among them. One of Mr. Macron’s senior advisers complained about bullying by Washington earlier this week. “Europe refuses to allow the U.S. to be the trade policeman of the world,” Bruno Le Maire, the economy minister, told The Financial Times.

The two sides remain at odds over broader trade issues as well. Mr. Trump has slapped steel and aluminum tariffs on Europe and other trading partners, and has threatened tariffs on cars manufactured in Europe.

Mr. Trump said negotiations to ease the tariff war have been promising. “We’ve made a lot of progress,” he said. “We’ll see if we can get it over the line, as they say.”

Mr. Trump remains deeply unpopular in Europe, especially in France, where just 9 percent think he will do the right thing in international relations, according to the Pew Research Center. The president’s seeming indifference to European sensibilities was reinforced by a report in Le Monde, the French newspaper, that in a meeting with the leaders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania earlier this year, Mr. Trump confused the Baltic states for Balkan states and blamed them for the war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Mr. Macron understands the importance of maintaining the relationship, said Karen Donfried, president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. But “domestically,” she said, “it may be better for him if the bromance has cooled visibly.”

Charles A. Kupchan, a former Europe adviser to Mr. Obama, said that Europe has all but given up on Mr. Trump and is focused instead on developing its own “strategic autonomy” to make it less dependent on the United States.

“Trump might be able to retain decent working relationships with populist governments in Italy, Poland, and Hungary,” he said. “But the rest of Europe is resigned to running out the clock, hoping and praying that Trump is a one-term president.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump Meets With France’s President, and This Time It’s Not Buddy-Buddy. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Trump Administration Uses Video From Conspiracy Site to Justify Barring of CNN Reporter

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President Trump clashed on Wednesday with Jim Acosta, CNN’s chief White House correspondent, at a news conference. The White House used a misleading video to justify stripping Mr. Acosta of his press credentials.CreditCreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

The Trump administration relied on a misleadingly edited video from a contributor to the conspiracy site Infowars to help justify removing the credentials of CNN’s chief White House correspondent, a striking escalation in President Trump’s broadsides against the press.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, falsely accused Jim Acosta, the CNN journalist, of “placing his hands on a young woman,” a White House intern, as Mr. Acosta asked questions that irked the president during a formal news conference on Wednesday.

Television footage showed that Mr. Acosta and the intern made brief, benign contact — “Pardon me, ma’am,” the correspondent said — as she tried to take a microphone away from him at Mr. Trump’s behest.

But Ms. Sanders posted a 15-second video clip on Twitter that misleadingly suggested Mr. Acosta had pushed the intern’s upper arm. The clip was identical to one posted earlier by Paul Joseph Watson, an Infowars contributor, according to a forensic analysis by The New York Times.

“We will not tolerate the inappropriate behavior clearly documented in this video,” Ms. Sanders wrote.

Infowars, which has been banned by platforms like Twitter and Facebook, is known for spreading conspiracy theories, including one pushed by its founder, Alex Jones, that the mass shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., was a hoax. Ms. Sanders — who once encouraged Americans to view the work of James O’Keefe, a right-wing activist, “whether it’s accurate or not” — declined to say on Thursday why she had distributed the video from her official White House account.

“The question is: Did the reporter make contact or not?” Ms. Sanders said in a statement. “The video is clear, he did.”

There is no evidence the video has been faked. But the editing, including zooming in and repeating several frames, exaggerated the contact between Mr. Acosta and the intern. The low quality of the video, which briefly freezes either deliberately or because of a glitch, adds to the ambiguity, the analysis showed.

The removal of Mr. Acosta’s credentials, which curbs his access to the West Wing and its staff, has little precedent in the modern White House. Past presidents have clashed with outspoken journalists like Sam Donaldson and Helen Thomas, but did not restrict their access.

Still, the move against Mr. Acosta, a frequent antagonist known for challenging the president during news conferences, was not entirely a surprise.

The daily White House press briefing has slowly vanished. In July, a CNN reporter was barred from a Rose Garden event because White House aides said she had asked questions too aggressively.

Mr. Trump and his political team are no doubt aware that Mr. Acosta is a useful foil. “CNN sucks!” is a common chant at the president’s rallies, and there is little political downside for the administration to restrict access to one of the network’s star correspondents. The move is likely to rile Mr. Trump’s opponents, buoy his supporters and have little or no effect on those occupying the nation’s shrinking middle ground.

And, as with most things Trump, nothing was cut-and-dried.

There was the timing: Mr. Acosta’s credential was stripped hours after the president fired his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, and had to explain away a difficult midterm election that handed his Democratic antagonists control of the House. Political strategists observed that a controversy over press rights, instigated by the White House, would make for a useful ploy to distract journalists and perhaps the public.

Then there were the players: a showman president and an ambitious television correspondent in the spotlight.

Mr. Acosta sometimes elicits eye-rolls from others in the White House press corps, who wonder if his aggressive questions are meant less to draw out information from Mr. Trump than to create a camera-ready spectacle. “Most of the people there were serious reporters asking serious questions,” Chris Wallace, the “Fox News Sunday” moderator, said of Wednesday’s news conference. “But Jim Acosta, I thought, embarrassed himself.”

Dozens of other journalists disagreed with that view, offering public support. The Washington Post’s media columnist Margaret Sullivan, for one, advised CNN to sue the White House on First Amendment grounds.

The move against Mr. Acosta also came shortly after a pipe bomb turned up at CNN’s New York headquarters. The suspect arrested in the case, Cesar Sayoc Jr., had been photographed at a Trump rally holding an anti-CNN sign, and the authorities found a “CNN Sucks” sticker on his van.

At Infowars, the imprimatur of the White House was a welcome development.

The site has lost a chunk of its audience since being banned by several major online platforms this summer, including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Apple’s App Store. Mr. Watson, who rose to prominence on the site, has kept his social media and YouTube accounts, providing one of the few remaining means for Mr. Jones to reach a mainstream audience.

The video tweeted by Ms. Sanders makes it appear that Mr. Acosta is making forceful, sustained contact with the intern’s arm. The Infowars video also has no sound, so that Mr. Acosta’s “pardon me” is not heard.

“If you look at original, higher-quality videos from other vantage points, you can more clearly see that while there was some contact between the reporter and intern, he did not strike her as his hand comes down,” said Hany Farid, a digital forensics expert at Dartmouth College who analyzed the clip for The Times.

The news conference was broadcast on major cable outlets, including the public affairs network C-SPAN, meaning that she had other options than to use a clip put together by a contributor to a notorious site.

Infowars seized on the publicity that went with Ms. Sanders’s use of the clip, posting incendiary items under headlines like “Did Jim Acosta Assault a Woman?” Mr. Jones did not respond to a message left on his cellphone. Mr. Watson, who is based in Britain, did not respond to requests for comment.

In a video interview posted on Infowars on Thursday, Mr. Watson acknowledged to Mr. Jones that the clip had what he called “digital artifact problems.”

“I ran it through like three different programs and re-uploaded it to Twitter, O.K.?” Mr. Watson said. “That’s not doctoring. Doctoring is when you change the footage deliberately.” He added: “The media invented a conspiracy theory to distract from Acosta’s behavior. Sarah Sanders was perfectly correct in posting this video, which is genuine, and it proves her point that Acosta placed his hands on the woman to overpower her.”

“You’re right, Paul, he overpowered a woman,” Mr. Jones interjected.

Mr. Acosta did no such thing. On Thursday, the White House News Photographers Association said it was “appalled” that the White House had distributed the Infowars clip.

“As visual journalists, we know that manipulating images is manipulating truth,” the group said in a statement. “It’s deceptive, dangerous and unethical. Knowingly sharing manipulated images is equally problematic, particularly when the person sharing them is a representative of our country’s highest office with vast influence over public opinion.”

Mr. Trump has made CNN into one of his marquee targets. In the summer of 2017, he used the @realdonaldtrump and @POTUS accounts to share a 28-second video that showed Mr. Trump himself violently wrestling to the ground an opponent with the CNN logo for a head. “#FraudNewsNetwork,” the president added as a comment.

CNN’s president, Jeff Zucker, has recently criticized Mr. Trump in unflinching language, calling his anti-press language a danger to journalists. On Wednesday, the network said the White House’s retaliation against Mr. Acosta was a “threat to our democracy.”

Trump Boasts and Scorns Globalism to Skeptical U.N. Crowd

UNITED NATIONS — President Trump thrust his commitment to an “America First” foreign policy back onto the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday. But in his second address on this diplomatic stage, he sounded as eager to claim credit for his achievements after 20 months in office, as he was to disrupt the world order.

If Mr. Trump had changed, so had his audience — no longer as daunted by the insurgent figure who left them slack-jawed last year when he vowed to “crush loser terrorists,” mocked North Korea’s leader as “Rocket Man” and declared that parts of the world “are going to hell.”

This time, emissaries from around the world listened quietly as Mr. Trump fulminated at foes like Iran and failing states like Venezuela. They nodded as he singled out an enemy-turned-partner, Kim Jong-un of North Korea, expressing optimism for a diplomatic opening that would have seemed far-fetched even a year ago.

But when Mr. Trump declared, “In less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country,” the crowd broke into murmurs and laughter.

Briefly disconcerted, the president smiled and said, “I did not expect that reaction, but that’s O.K.”

It was a jarring moment for a leader who usually speaks to adoring crowds at “Make America Great Again” rallies, where his use of superlatives to describe his success draws reliable cheers. Mr. Trump still commands the world stage and he is still capable of upending American foreign policy with a single tweet. But after a year of such bombast, many in the audience at the United Nations treated him almost as a source of levity, not fear.

There is also evidence that foreign leaders are more willing to push back. Speaking after Mr. Trump, President Emmanuel Macron of France said the Paris climate accord had survived despite America’s decision to pull out. In a not-so-subtle slap at Mr. Trump, he proposed that countries refuse to sign trade deals with those who do not comply with the accord.

On Monday, France joined Germany and Britain — as well as the other signatories, Russia, China, and Iran — in recommitting to the Iran nuclear accord, repudiated by Mr. Trump in May. They did so even as Mr. Trump urged Europe to isolate Iran and warned of draconian new sanctions that would penalize America’s allies for not cutting off commercial ties with the Iranians.

President Hassan Rouhani of Iran criticized Mr. Trump for quitting the agreement and made clear he thought the president’s offer to talk with Iran’s leaders was disingenuous (earlier in the day, Mr. Trump insisted it was the Iranians who had wanted to talk).

“It is ironic that the United States government does not even conceal its plan for overthrowing the same government it invites to talks,” Mr. Rouhani said.

Mr. Trump, for his part, condemned Iran’s government as a “corrupt dictatorship” that had looted its people and used the windfall from the nuclear deal to finance what he described as a terrorist campaign that is destabilizing the entire Middle East.

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President Trump spoke about denuclearization in the Korean Peninsula, the civil war in Syria and the Iranian regime during his address to the United Nations General Assembly.Published OnSept. 25, 2018CreditCreditImage by Dave Sanders for The New York Times

“Iran’s leaders sow chaos, death and destruction,” he declared. “They do not respect their neighbors or borders, or the sovereign rights of nations.”

“Not good,” he added.

Shifting gears, Mr. Trump lavished praise on his efforts to shake up the established order, pointing to his withdrawal from trade deals and international organizations, his recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and his meeting last June with Mr. Kim of North Korea, which he said had produced far more than anyone expected.

“The missiles and rockets are no longer flying in every direction,” Mr. Trump said. “Nuclear testing has stopped. Some military facilities are already being dismantled. Our hostages have been released.”

“I would like to thank Chairman Kim for his courage and for the steps he has taken,” he said, adding, “much work needs to be done.”

Mr. Trump’s speech showed a president at once fickle and set in his ways. His emphasis on sovereignty was a repeat of the big theme of last year’s General Assembly address, and it showed that on the core principles of his “America First” foreign policy, Mr. Trump is not budging.

Yet Mr. Trump’s warm words for Mr. Kim were a 180-degree shift from 2017, when he said the North Korean leader was on a suicidal collision course with the United States. That showed he is open to radical shifts in approach, based on his idiosyncratic view of personal diplomacy and his self-avowed skill as a dealmaker in spotting opportunities.

As he did last year, Mr. Trump relied on his senior domestic adviser, Stephen Miller, for much of the speechwriting. Mr. Miller has spearheaded the White House’s immigration policy and its recent decision to cut significantly the number of refugees the United States will accept.

The national security adviser, John R. Bolton, an even more ardent proponent than Mr. Trump of the virtues of sovereignty, also injected themes. In his own speech at a conference on Tuesday, Mr. Bolton alluded to the frequent description in Iran of the United States as the “Great Satan.”

“If you cross us, our allies, or our partners,” Mr. Bolton said, “if you harm our citizens, if you continue to lie, cheat, and deceive, yes, there will indeed be hell to pay.”

For presidents, General Assembly speeches are a good guide to the evolution of their thinking. In 2009, his first year in office, Barack Obama delivered a soaring paean to the need for diplomacy and collective action. By 2014, Mr. Obama had cast off some early ambitions and dwelt instead on the threat from the Islamic State — an enemy Mr. Trump said Tuesday had been “driven out from the territory they once held in Iraq and Syria.”

Mr. Trump has not yet faced a major foreign policy crisis, and his speech reflected his good fortune. He still spoke mostly about actions he had taken to unwind the legacy of Mr. Obama.

But he also promoted his record in the Middle East, where he said his closer ties to Saudi Arabia had helped the fight against extremism, and to Israel, where he said the United States was no longer “held hostage to old dogmas, discredited ideologies, and so-called experts who have been proven wrong, over the years, time and time again.”

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When Mr. Trump declared that his administration “has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country,” the audience broke out into murmurs and laughter.CreditChang W. Lee/The New York Times

Critics said Mr. Trump’s triumphalist tone provoked the derisive reaction. “If you’re boastful, and in the most improbable ways, it’s just becomes outlandish,” said Nicholas Burns, a senior diplomat under President George W. Bush. “It was a sad moment for American leadership.”

The president expressed resentment toward a familiar array of perceived malefactors: allies, who he said did not pay their fair share for military defense; trading partners, who he said exploited unfair agreements that harmed American workers; and oil producers, whom he accused of gouging the United States and other customers.

“OPEC and OPEC nations are, as usual, ripping off the rest of the world, and I don’t like it,” Mr. Trump said. “Nobody should like it.”

Mr. Trump also assailed countries, like China, that use industrial planning in their economies to undercut competitors on trade. The United States, he said, was systematically renegotiating what he called unfair trade deals and striking back against China’s theft of intellectual property, predatory licensing agreements and the dumping of goods in the American market under President Xi Jinping.

“I have great respect and affection for my friend President Xi, but I have made clear that our trade imbalance is just not acceptable,” he said. “China’s market distortions, and the way they deal, cannot be tolerated.”

America’s other great strategic rival, Russia, went unmentioned by Mr. Trump, except for a reference to what he described as Germany’s dependence on Russian energy. That was also Mr. Trump’s only mention of Germany, a staunch ally, though he praised its neighbor, Poland, which has an increasingly autocratic government, for its construction of a pipeline in the Baltic Sea to diversify its energy supply.

After his speech, Mr. Trump took credit for a change in Iran’s behavior since he withdrew from the nuclear deal. He claimed, without evidence, that Iran had abandoned its ambitions to build a land bridge to the Mediterranean Sea. At some point, he predicted, the United States and Iran would have “meaningful negotiations and probably do a deal.”

“Iran is a much different country today than it was a year ago,” he said before meeting Colombia’s president, Ivan Duque Marquez. “They have riots in the street. They have horrible inflation, the worst in the world. Their currency is a disaster. Everything in Iran is failing right now.”

Aside from Iran, Venezuela drew Mr. Trump’s harshest critique. He described the political tumult roiling the country as a “human tragedy” and said the United States would impose new sanctions on the government of President Nicolás Maduro. Socialism, he said, had squandered Venezuela’s oil resources and “driven its people into abject poverty.”

Mr. Trump spoke of the great potential of the United Nations, but expressed little regard for any other international bodies. The United States, he said, had rightfully exited the Human Rights Council, refused to take part in the Global Compact on Migration or to recognize the authority of the International Criminal Court, which has recently considered investigating the conduct of American troops in Afghanistan.

The president singled out India, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Poland as worthy partners: nations that he said had distinctive traditions and cultures, patriotic societies and a fierce commitment to independence.

“Sovereign and independent nations are the only vehicle where freedom has ever survived, democracy has ever endured or peace has ever prospered,” Mr. Trump declared. “And so we must protect our sovereignty and our cherished independence above all.”

Between Trump and Brussels, Trade Talks Face Myriad Challenges

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Robert E. Lighthizer, the United States trade representative, on Monday held the first of a series of formal discussions with the European Union’s top trade official, Cecilia Malmstrom.CreditCreditTom Brenner/The New York Times

BRUSSELS — When it comes to trade negotiations, there is Trump speed, and then there is Brussels speed. Reconciling the two will be more laborious and hazardous than expected, exposing the world’s biggest trade partnership to further turmoil in the months ahead.

That was the message after President Trump’s top trade negotiator concluded talks with his European counterpart on Monday, with both signaling that any negotiations would be unlikely to produce the quick wins Mr. Trump prefers. If the president runs out of patience, there is a high risk the talks could fall apart entirely, disrupting the $ 1 trillion in goods and services that flow across the Atlantic every year.

Robert E. Lighthizer, the United States trade representative, met in Brussels with Cecilia Malmstrom, the European commissioner for trade, in the first in a series of formal discussions about what officials described as a far-reaching trans-Atlantic trade agreement.

Progress, though, could be halting. In particular, the European Union appeared to step back from a major concession it made in August.

Ms. Malmstrom said then that the bloc was willing to cut tariffs on motor vehicles to zero, if the United States did the same. The president, his bluff called, immediately declared that the concession was inadequate. Now, the European line is that Ms. Malmstrom will need the approval of the union’s 28 member states before further talks on the issue.

By promising something and then backtracking, Ms. Malmstrom seemed to be taking a page from Mr. Trump’s own playbook. She also made it clear that Europe will not be as accommodating as Mexico, which agreed to revisions to the North American Free Trade Agreement last month, allowing Mr. Trump to claim a victory.

“The E.U. is not going to work that way,” said Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “They are not going to roll over the way the outgoing Mexican government did. There isn’t going to be an easy win here.”

The talks Monday were an attempt to add substance to a promising, but vague, agreement in July between Mr. Trump and Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm and the organization that leads the bloc’s trade negotiations.

The two leaders agreed after a meeting at the White House on July 25 to “launch a new phase” that would include “strong trade relations in which both of us will win.” The United States and Europe also promised not to further escalate a trade dispute that already includes tariffs on European steel and aluminum. Europe has retaliated with tariffs against American products like motorcycles, pleasure boats, corn and orange juice.

Businesses on both sides of the Atlantic are rooting for negotiators to not only avert a trade war but also eliminate barriers to commerce between the United States and the European Union. Such a deal would benefit both sides, trade experts say, and help them compete better with China, whose trade practices have been criticized by both Washington and Brussels.

European leaders have already achieved one of their main goals, which was simply to delay Mr. Trump from carrying out his threat to slap the tariffs on car imports. The tone of discourse with the United States has also improved.

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A Porsche assembly line in Germany. President Trump’s threat of a 25 percent tariff on European car imports is already making potential buyers reluctant to place orders, analysts said.CreditRalph Orlowski/Reuters

“It’s the start of something,” said Peter Chase, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Brussels who is an expert on trans-Atlantic trade relations. “Right now both parties are more constructive than they were a couple of months ago.”

Mr. Trump could, however, easily grow tired of the European Union’s glacial decision-making process and follow through on threats to impose 25 percent tariffs on imported automobiles and car parts. He has taken particular issue with the trade deficit, calling Europe “as bad as China, just smaller.”

The mere prospect of tariffs has already begun to take a toll. German manufacturing unexpectedly fell in July largely because of falling demand for vehicles, according to data published last week.

And there are other points of dispute that could complicate the chances for an agreement. United States officials have said they want to discuss food imports, an area where Europe has a substantial trade surplus. The Europeans refuse to discuss agricultural products, a politically explosive topic in countries like France. Neither side mentioned farm products on Monday.

Europe’s ultimate goal is a broader agreement on industrial goods, eliminating not only tariffs but also regulations that, for example, require different kinds of bumpers or seatbelts on cars and add to manufacturing costs.

Trade advisers and diplomats have been holding informal talks since Mr. Trump and Mr. Juncker met in July, but Monday marked the start of formal discussions. Mr. Lighthizer said he was optimistic there would be progress to report in November. He and Ms. Malmstrom agreed to meet at the end of this month, though they did not specify a date.

The United States representative did not speak to reporters before or after arriving at the European Commission’s headquarters in Brussels. But the commission posted a short video of him walking down a hallway at the building and greeting Ms. Malmstrom.

“Hey, good morning to you, how are you?” Ms. Malmstrom said cheerfully in the video, pulling Mr. Lighthizer toward her to receive kisses on her cheeks.

Mr. Lighthizer replied somewhat cryptically that the greeting, involving a total of three kisses on alternating cheeks, was “the Ukrainian version.”

After representatives of the two sides took their seats, Ms. Malmstrom explained that she chose a smaller space where they would not have to shout at each other.

“It is a very good sign that the European Union and the United States are now engaged in dialogue at the highest level,” said Margaritis Schinas, the commission’s chief spokesman. “Of course, we’ll need to wait and see that this process crystallizes in results.”

Mr. Trump’s mercurial presence looms over the talks. Officials and business leaders in Europe are keenly aware that he could undercut progress with a single tweet or comment.

After European leaders said late in August that they were willing to eliminate tariffs on vehicles, a major concession, Mr. Trump was dismissive. “It’s not good enough,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg News.